If you're looking for something fun to do and you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, I just created a free app called Riddles for Kids. You can download it here.

Riddles for Kids includes the funniest kids riddles ever collected in one app, and it's FREE!

What's green, and sings? What time is it when you're on a trampoline? How did Noah see on the Ark at night? Download this free app and find out!

On each beautifully illustrated riddle, simply swipe the screen to reveal the answer. Click the star to bookmark your favorites. And turn on the music and sound effects for even more fun!

Perfect for reading in the car on road trips, or any time at all. Learn a new riddle to make your friends laugh.

What are you waiting for? Download now and start laughing!

I'm so tickled to be able to tell you that my very first picture book, More Bears!, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. This book was a blast to write, and I'm sure you are going to have a great time reading it as well. Order now for just $8.76 and be among the first to get it when it comes out November 1.

Product Description

Acclaimed children's poet Kenn Nesbitt makes his picture book debut with an uproariously funny story!

Talented poet Kenn Nesbitt's picture book debut will have you laughing while shouting "More Bears!" along with the story's disruptive audience. The author/narrator keeps adding more and more bears, which he describes in humorous detail, until he gets fed up! The bears ride, dance, surf, and even summersault off the page.

My first iPhone/iPod Touch app is now available for free in the Apple App Store. It is a rhyming dictionary called RhymeNow, and is perfect for anyone who is writing songs, poems, raps, etc., and needs to find just the right word.

Download RhymeNow by clicking here.

With RhymeNow you can:

• Quickly find rhymes from a database of 55,000 English words
• View rhymes organized by syllable count or word usage frequency
• Look up words that begin with, end with, or contain a group of letters (e.g., all words that include “cat” anywhere in the word)
• Find words that sound alike (e.g., words that sound similar to “cat”)

RhymeNow is designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch and, unlike similar programs, does NOT require an Internet connection. The entire rhyming database is stored on your device so you do not need to be online to lookup words.

For only 99 cents, it's a terrific deal.

Earlier this month I visited Gidney Avenue Magnet School in Newburgh, NY. Gidney Ave is a fairly large elementary school, with nearly 1000 students in grades K-6. Over the course of the day, I spoke to all of the students in the school, showing them how easy it is to write their own poetry, and just how much fun they can have doing it.

Not only were the kids enthusiastic about the assemblies, but they were eager to try out what they learned. The Times Herald-Record wrote this very nice article about my visit, and quoted Assistant Principal Laura Bair as saying, "I've never seen kids so inspired to go back and start writing..."

Arrange a visit to your school!

If you would like to get the students at your school excited about reading and writing, please visit the School Visits page on poetry4kids.com for more information about my school author visit programs. I am now booking school visits for the 2010/2011 school year and would love to come to your school and show your students just how much fun they can have with poetry!

I was looking at YouTube today and came across this lovely video that was based on my poem "Bed Head" from my book Revenge of the Lunch Ladies. Enjoy!

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

The Bumblebee
By Emily Christiansen, 8, from Bloomington, Minnesota

The afternoon was bright and sunny,
The perfect day to make some honey.
Buzz, buzz goes the bee,
Runs into a golf ball tee!
All he wanted was some pollen,
But SMACKED that tee and now has fallen.
I think he thought it was a flower,
Blooming from an April shower.
All his friends back at the hive
Were waiting for him to arrive.
He flew back home a little woozy,
I think he'll take a little snoozie!

National Poetry Month is almost upon us, and what better way to celebrate than with 30 new, previously unpublished poems from 30 children's poets? Last year's 30 Poets/30 Days was such a success, that blogger and poet Greg Pincus has once again gotten together some of the most talented children's poets writing today for the April 2010 edition.

Each day throughout the month of April, on his blog, Gottabook, Greg will post a brand new poem from a well-known children's poet.

This year's list of poets includes: Francisco X. Alarcon, Kathi Appelt, Jorge Argueta, Brod Bagert, Carmen Bernier-Grand, Calef Brown, Joseph Bruchac, James Carter, Kurt Cyrus, Graham Denton, Ralph Fletcher, David L. Harrison, Georgia Heard, Alan Katz, Bobbi Katz, Arthur A. Levine, George Ella Lyon, Heidi Mordhorst, Walter Dean Myers, Laura Purdie Salas, Liz Garton Scanlon, Alice Schertle, Charles R. Smith Jr., Eileen Spinelli, Susan Marie Swanson, Charles Waters, Carole Boston Weatherford, Jacqueline Woodson, and Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

So mark your calendars for April -- every day in April -- and drop by Gottabook to see what wondrous words await.

Oh, and thank you, Greg, for dreaming up and organizing such a monumental project!

The iLearn Technology blog, an "edublog about integrating technology into the classroom," has written an article on the free eBook edition of My Hippo has the Hiccups, and even gone one step further. They've provided a number of tips an examples of how this online eBook can be used as a classroom teaching tool, and make your poetry lessons fun.

One of their suggestions is:

"Invite your students to create their own silly Kenn Nesbitt inspired poetry. Make a class book of the silly poems and post them as a class ebook on Issuu."

(I'm glad I read the article; I'd never heard of Issuu before, but I'll bet we'll be hearing a lot from them in the future.)

Click here to read How to Integrate My Hippo Has the Hiccups Into the Classroom.

I'm humbled and very pleased by this glowing review of my work on The Book Chook, a children's literature blog by Australian writer Susan Stephenson.

Thanks, Susan!

The TIME for Kids 2010 Poetry Contest ended on the 15th with roughly 1,200 submissions. Many of these entries had poems from multiple students, some as many as an entire class. So I believe there were over 2,000 individual poems.

I'm reading all of them to pick five winners. It may take me a few weeks. Winners will be announced in late April or early May on timeforkids.com and, hopefully, in the print edition of the magazine as well.

If you submitted a poem to the contest, thank you and good luck!